


Eye Open, Everywhere

by wormsin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asexuality, Cows, End of Season 4, M/M, Metatext, Reality Break, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormsin/pseuds/wormsin
Summary: John’s eye opens, and it’s nothing like before.Seeing, before, was disturbing, yes—suddenly knowing fact and subjectivity, things he had no right to know laid bare as the cloudless, broken sky above him—but at least it had been linear. Facts arranged themselves in his mind as stories with beginning, middles, and ends.But time isn’t like that.It’s fucking everywhere, and so is John.---John's eye opens, and time isn't so linear anymore.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 1
Kudos: 62





	Eye Open, Everywhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [any_open_eye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/any_open_eye/gifts).



John’s eye opens, and it’s nothing like before. 

Seeing, before, was disturbing, yes—suddenly knowing fact and subjectivity, things he had no right to know laid bare before him as the cloudless, broken sky—but at least it had been  _ linear. _ Facts arranged themselves in his mind as stories with beginning, middles, and ends.

But time isn’t like that.

It’s fucking everywhere, and so is John.

* * *

He’s driving to their safe house for the first time, and Martin is half asleep against the window. His hands clench against the steering wheel, suddenly nauseated. Oh god, he has to warn Martin. He has to tell him. If he can just tell him about the tape then maybe none of this needs to _be happening_.

“Oh!” Martin perks up suddenly. “Cows! Look at them, John.”

John chuckles, and smiles easily. He does not screech the car to a stop, or panic, or tell Martin about his eye or the tape. Because he didn’t. Doesn't. Instead, John glances out the window on Martin’s side of the car. 

“Cows,” he agrees. “Those sure are some cows.”

“I love cows,” Martin says sincerely. 

“What’s not to love?”

“Their eyes are so kind. You know? They, uh, everyone thinks they’re just dumb animals, but they’re not, really?” Martin’s enthusiasm is infectious, and his embarrassed justification is equally endearing.

“No, no. Cows are great.” John isn’t so good at sincerity, and all words sound bitter coming out of his mouth, but he’s trying. Martin appreciates that he’s trying. More than appreciates. Martin is glowing, his heart rate picks up and his cheeks flush, and John can see the trajectory of events unfolding like a Rube Goldberg Machine if he reaches across and takes Martin’s hand.

Not all roads lead to the same place, with them, but enough do, so he doesn’t reach out yet. 

* * *

This is definitely weird. Maybe the weirdest thing that has happened to him. At least the burial had up and down, and Isolation had “I” and “others”. One “I”, one stupid, unblinking John. 

He is operating with perfect knowledge, making tea for Martin as he unloads groceries, bumbling about who gets which room, pushing play on the tape, watching bad SyFy originals. But John can’t change anything, not anything that  _ matters _ . 

He takes Martin’s hand in the car; he doesn’t. He tries to kiss Martin on the cheek and gets his ear (bloody christ); he doesn’t initiate anything; “I just don’t want to take advantage, I mean, it’s not fair that I  _ know _ —“ and then Martin is all over him. Christ, it’s good. John knows exactly what to do when he’s got Martin in bed and he’s paralyzed with indecision.

“Thanks,” Martin says as John hands him the mug. “Oh, did you...?”

“I remembered how you take it,” John lies.

“This is  _ perfect _ , John.”

Martin lingers. They do a lot of lingering, in the safe house. Sometimes, he kisses Martin now. He has arranged it into a perfect moment. (Or maybe, he doesn’t. Can’t quite figure out the difference between perfect prediction and alternate timelines, if such things exist.) He knows that Martin would (will, does) taste like sugar and milk.

He doesn’t tell Martin about the tape.

* * *

The thing is, John isn’t just in the cabin. He’s everywhere/when. But the only way to handle that is to focus, and the safe house is one contained place, just the two endless iterations of them, dancing as approachable variables. Time is no longer a factor, but his sight is, and he can dilate it. Once a thought occurs to him, he has always known it, but you can’t just look at the sun and make anything out besides a flat white disk. 

Blink: John can’t change the outcome, but he might be changing small paths along the way. 

Blink: maybe he hasn’t figured out how to see the ways to change the end. It might not be impossible. It’s just hidden.

Blink: if he ever knows how to change time, he didn’t. He doesn’t change a thing. Perfect knowledge of all his fuck ups and the end of the god damn world, and John doesn’t fix it; he doesn’t even  _ try.  _ John doesn’t try. John knew, and he doesn’t—oh god, _he never saves them._

Blink: could Elias do this?

Blink: he does change the ending, and doesn’t open his eye, so he can’t see all of time, therefore he can’t change it. 

Blink: I’ve got to warn him. 

* * *

“Um,” Martin says, in a way that John knows, intimately, precedes an important Martin-thought. They’re on the couch in front of said awful SyFi original, and John has his arm around Martin’s shoulder. “Have… have you been feeling alright?”

My stomach flips, or something like that.

“I feel great, actually?” John says. “I mean, all things considered. Why do you…?”

“Oh it’s just—" Adorable Martin spluttering. “You’ve been really? Nice? To me? I mean, like, considerate and… I didn’t think… It’s just  _ different. _ ”

John laughs and rubs his face. “Am I that terrible?”

“What! No, no, you’re—"

I open John’s eye, just a fraction, here. I always have. John shifts on the couch, arm out from its home across Martin's shoulders, and cradles Martin’s face. “I’m not so good at words,” John/I say, eyes down. “But… you’ve got to know, don’t you?”

John/I look up. The whole of spacetime is Martin’s precious, cradled face. “You know how I feel about you.”

It’s not a question, but it’s enough. Martin’s eyes swell with tears, and his laugh is startled,  _ relieved.  _ “Y-yeah. I know.”

* * *

Blink: the tapes.

That’s easy. Like flicking the fingers of my scarred hands. They’re part of me, more so than the rest of John-reality is, and relatively unstuck from causality. I shuffle them around the board, and the shape of everything changes, often collapsing completely. I save failed boards as references, and they propagate around my knowledge-space. Many Dead-John’s, pinned like butterflies. 

I have fun with it, because if there’s one thing in John-reality that’s consistent, it’s cruel irony. The biggest cruel irony being that, in some sense, I am doing this to myself for all of eternity. 

There are other constants. I can remove some of the tapes, but not all of them, and the exact number needed completely eludes me. I can record most things in John-reality, but there are barriers: dark and webbed and free-falling, etc. 

I can move tapes, and I can move Johns. But many Johns have their eyes shut, and it’s harder to show them. That’s why I keep going back to the safe house. One of the reasons. 

Eliases, or should I say Magnuses, are easier to control. Unfortunately, they can’t get to where Johns get, though they are invaluable in getting Johns _there_. They like cruel irony as much as I do. 

I can’t seem to stop the apocalypse without making knowledge-space supremely unhappy. I think I’ve set myself back several iterations, if the scars are anything to go by. Maybe those John-realities go on without the apocalypse, without me, though there are few that get to that point with Alive-Johns and Alive-Martins and Alive-everyone-else. I tell myself that apocalypses are relative. 

Blink: No, I don’t know which board is “mine”. That’s not really how this works.

Blink: The Others aren’t playing like me, I don’t think. Maybe Web is. I can’t look too closely at that idea without losing focus and if I lose focus—

Blink: There is an ideal arrangement, that gets John and everyone else to the end of the world, but they’re prepared, as good as they can be. The problem is not so much that I can’t see what happens after the end of the world, so much as every John that gets there _can see too_ , and the possibilities are blinding. We’ve tried opening eyes there, and, well, we thought John was broken open by the apocalypse but, boy, can it be worse. 

Blink: Knowledge-space and John-reality need John. 

But we also need Martin. 

Martin, who is untouchable. Who we long to touch. Who we know so intimately, as an “other”. Not "I". Eyes closed. Because Martin went away, where we could not see him, and that means—

* * *

“I thought you were… I mean, I heard—Um. Are you sure you want to?”

“Oh it’s… I usually don’t, but it’s not like I’m opposed. I just don’t need it, or want it, in the same way as others.”

“Okay…”

“In fact, I am definitely, very  _ not  _ opposed.”

“Really.”

“Really. I’d like to.”

“Alright. I usually… I guess you know?”

I laugh. “Yeah, I know. I could know everything you’d like to do Martin. But I’d much rather you tell me.”

“...You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Martin tells me. I don’t ask questions like that, so much as tell him to tell me more.

As it turns out, Martins really like telling me how they like it, once they get warmed up.

* * *

I go to the Isolation.

There, on the beach, before I make Martin look at me.

“You’re not really here,” Martin sobs.

“I’m not,” I say. “But I still need to talk to you.”

“What’s the point?”

_The whole world_ , I don’t tell him. “What if… you pretended to trust me. If I’m not here, then I’m you, and we really need to talk about something.”

He sighs. Bored of this. So, unimaginably tired. “Fine,” he snaps. “What is so important?”

I take a deep breath. 

“Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we can fix everything. That you can save everyone. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“Well, you can. In this hypothetical, you can change anything that happened, or will happen. The problem is, in order to get the chance to _ fix everything,  _ you have to… well… destroy the world. As we know it, I mean.”

Martin looks confused. 

“We’re going to bring about the apocalypse, Martin. It’s coming, soon. You can either try to stop the apocalypse now, and have no guarantee that it won’t happen later, with no way to ensure that we’ll survive it or put it back to rights. Or, you end the world, and give us a fighting chance.”

“I can’t do any of that.”

“You  _ can.” _

“How am I so sure that I know how to fix _anything_? I mean, christ! I can’t even help my friends not fall apart, or help myself, or help John, ever. What makes you think I can—what? Save the world?” He laughs. He's angry. “You think I can save the world? This isn’t a fucking movie,  _ Martin _ .”

“But if you could—”

“Yes, I’d do it!” Martin shouts. “I’d do anything! I’d tear myself, or the world, apart, to make sure he’s… you think I wouldn’t? I’d do anything, wouldn’t I, for a chance that we would be okay, even if it was just for a bit, just one fucking break from all of this.” He’s crying now. “I’d do anything for a moment where we’d be okay. That’s why I’m here. Because… because even if it means I’m not around anymore…”

He squares his shoulders, and there’s a fire in his eyes I don’t usually see. “Even if it means I don’t get to exist, yeah. I’d take your devil’s bargain.”

* * *

So, I do it. I arrange the pieces. This board looks familiar. 

It looks like home. 

“I wish you could see this,” I tell Martin, laying cozy together in bed. 

“Hmm?”

“Us, here, forever.”

“Hmm. That sounds nice.” Martin sighs, sleepy, into my chest. A perfect refuge in the eye of the storm. I'm here always, and maybe that will be enough to keep me together for what happens next.

“It is,” I say. “It’s beautiful.”


End file.
